Hiring processes are full of design choices that nobody ever questions. Requirements that sound reasonable but aren’t defined. Formats that have stayed the same for decades. Onboarding systems built for one type of learner. Talented people are being screened out, not because they can’t do the job, but because of how the process itself is designed.
These aren’t people failures; they’re design failures that quietly exclude the people organisations most need. So how do we actually design hiring in a way that works for everyone?
My guest this week is Theo Smith, author of the new book Designed for Humans: Rethinking Work in the Age of AI. In our conversation, he shares practical ways to spot and fix the system design flaws hiding in plain sight across the hiring process.
In the interview, we discuss:
• Why people aren’t always the problem
• The hidden barriers in job ads
• Probation periods as red flags
• Why structured interviews still fail
• How people mask gaps at work
• AI is accelerating flawed system design.
• Onboarding as a critical failure point
• Designing workplaces for humans
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00:00
Matt Alder
People aren’t t. he problem with hiring systems are from job adverts that unintentionally exclude people to selection processes that reward interview performance over actual capability. Flawed design is baked into how we hire. AI is now accelerating these flawed systems at speed. So how do we redesign hiring for humans? Keep listening to find out. Support for this podcast is brought to you by the Excellent Workplace Rate Rating by Time Magazine and Statista, a new global standard for workplace recognition. If you’re committed to building a standout employer brand, your company can apply for the Time Magazine Excellent Workplace rating and be evaluated across 14 categories covering the full employee lifecycle. You’ll receive a detailed data driven report highlighting where you excel as an employer and where you can improve.
00:59
Matt Alder
Companies that qualify will also earn the Time Magazine Excellent Workplace Award and logo to showcase their achievement beyond recognition. The program helps you truly understand your workplace and your people, benchmark against peers and strengthen your employer brand with credible third party validation. Head to the contact form at time.com/excellentworkplace and that’s time.com/excellentworkplace and include the discount code recruitingFuture in your message to receive 20% off your company’s rating. If you’re attending Unleash America In Las Vegas, March 17th through 19th, visit the excellent Workplace Rating booth to meet Statista experts and secure your chance to win a free rating for your company.
02:08
Matt Alder
Hi there. Welcome to episode 776 of Recruiting Future with me, Matt Alderman. Hiring processes are full of design choices that no one ever questions, requirements that sound reasonable but aren’t really defined. Formats that have stayed the same for decades. Onboarding systems built for just one type of learner. Talented people are being screened out not because they can’t do the job, but because of how the process itself has been designed. So how do we redesign hiring in a way that works for everyone? My guest this week is Theo Smith, author of the new book Design for Humans Rethinking Work in the Age of AI. In our conversation, Theo shares some practical ways to spot and fix the system design flaws hiding in plain sight across the hiring process. Hi Theo, and welcome back to the podcast.
03:07
Theo Smith
Hey, nice to be here Matt again. Love it.
03:11
Matt Alder
Always a pleasure to have you on the show. For people who may not know you,
03:16
Matt Alder
Can you introduce yourself and tell everyone what you do?
03:19
Theo Smith
Yeah, so I’m about 18 years in TA recruitment. Employer branding makes, you know, a bit of everything really. I’m Theo Smith, as you already know. And I also love the topic of neurodiversity and neuro inclusion and that’s become my big thing for the past four, five years. And because of my own personal experiences and that of my family. And so, yeah, I do a lot of work in the DNI space. Even though the world is on fire and the world’s trying to stop us doing it, I’m still here doing my thing. So, yeah, that’s pretty much me. And I write books and stuff, Matt.
03:52
Matt Alder
Yeah, absolutely. I think last time you’re on, you were talking about your previous book, which was, you know, which is great and.
03:57
Matt Alder
I still recommend to people.
03:59
Matt Alder
But you have a new one coming out or is it already come out? Tell us about it.
04:04
Matt Alder
What’s it about, When’s it coming out.
04:06
Matt Alder
And why did you write it?
04:07
Theo Smith
Brilliant. So it’s kind of almost out. Kind of out. You can get it via Amazon as a Kindle book. The hardback’s just come out and the other book will be out probably by the time you’re listening to this, it’ll be out. Right. So go buy it. It’s called Designed for Humans and Rethinking Work in the Age of AI. And when I wrote my first book, Matt, I wrote it because I was experiencing something that I wanted to share with others. I’m dyslexic, I’m adhd, I’m autistic like my child and found out later in life and it kind of made answer of. Of a lot of things that I, I couldn’t answer. I was only listening to Greta Goering this morning on Desert Island Discs. It’s a secret of mine that I listen to this most mornings.
04:52
Theo Smith
And she is the first woman in cinematic history to have the sole director’s credit for billion dollar blockbuster film Barbie. And she describes ADHD in the very similar way to the way I feel about it. Which is it an of the unanswered questions that I had about myself. Right, yeah. So I wrote the first book because of that and I’ve written this book for the same reason, Matt. I felt that the world was getting excitable over AI. It’s on fire. We’re, you know, having DNI kicked down the road and I’m kind of thinking, what can I do? What, what can little old Theo do about this? Yeah, I’ll do what dyslexics do and I’ll put pen to paper, write another book.
05:37
Matt Alder
That’ll, that’ll be easy, that resolve it.
05:39
Theo Smith
And by the way, I’m, I’m, I’m delayed on my third book, which should have been my second book, which is to support ND parents with ND kids, which is coming out later this year with Hatchet. And so like I don’t know what goes on in my brain, Matt. But basically the book is to help people in organizations think about systems, processes and the design of them and that people aren’t the problem, systems are.
06:09
Matt Alder
And designing better systems is to the benefit of all humans, isn’t it? It’s not just about neurodiversity, it’s about making it better for everyone.
06:18
Theo Smith
So that’s a really important point, Matt. And the reason why I say that’s an important point because people struggle with things they don’t understand. And however good intentioned they are, when they hear things that they don’t understand, it might stop them doing the good things they might do. So what I wanted to do in this moment in time is strip away a lot of the language. I’ve intentionally not gone heavy on DNI inclusion, neurodiverse, all of that. I focused on humans, people in systems and processes and how the design of those systems and processes is harming them and how good intention people have the power to change that in their own environment. Strip away language, just intent. You want to do a good thing, you can do a good thing. Here’s how you can do it.
07:13
Matt Alder
Absolutely.
07:13
Matt Alder
And so let’s kind of bring this.
07:15
Matt Alder
To life with an example because you kind of the whole of the employee experience.
07:19
Matt Alder
Let’s talk about hiring.
07:21
Matt Alder
So interviewing, onboarding, everything that kind of goes with it. What are the, what are the issues from a systems perspective that you do? You see?
07:32
Theo Smith
Well, often they hear the things that we deem are people problems, right. And so we hire somebody, they don’t work out and it’s a people problem because that’s easier to go, that person was odd, they’re weird, they didn’t fit in, they didn’t get the culture. And there’s probably people sat here listening to this going, it’s the same story. Well, sadly Matt, yes it is. You know, that is fundamentally the problem that we have. But it’s the same story that is going to be accelerated with AI and that is what I fear. So as an example, I analyzed 100 graduate job adverts recently and I’ve posted about this on my newsletter. I’ve been posting elements of the book on newsletter. My ideas and concepts so if you want to have a look at that, please do on LinkedIn. But it’s.
08:15
Theo Smith
I analyzed hundreds of job ads and around 85% of graduate job ads ask for excellent attention to detail. Right. And we’re not really going any deeper in the advert in terms of what that fundamentally means. Right. That is, let’s call H5, let’s call it 9. 9 in 10 graduate job ads at a point where graduates cannot get work, where graduate jobs of gone down significantly, they massively excluding those people who have already faced barriers through their life who may have really struggled to get to university to get that degree because of their life circumstances. Ultimately you’ll then put in another barrier saying there’s only 1 in 10 graduate jobs that are not going to demand this really strange thing called action. Attention to detail that is not explained. And I have excellent attention to detail. My child does.
09:19
Theo Smith
For example, if it’s around horses, huge attention to detail if it’s around horses and everything about them, but not if it’s about everything. If it’s about everything, then no, absolutely not. And so we keep. That’s a really simple example that I think will resonate with most people in the recruitment space in HR and that they’ll understand. But we continue to do it. Matt and I literally the reason for the book is I’ve pulled out loads of these. Right. That’s just a micro example. It is happening right across the process and it’s not just owned by recruiters and HR people, it is owned by managers. But we need to support the managers and recruitment people and HR people are also managers. Right. We need to best practice in terms of how we deliver the focus on people by adapting systems, processes, the design of them.
10:12
Theo Smith
That’s how we’re going to support them.
10:14
Matt Alder
I, I think that is an excellent example because phrases like that in job descriptions that end up in job advertisements. But people, I think if you challenged people around that then you would get a much better answer.
10:30
Matt Alder
It’s just a kind of a shortcut that it’s just always been in there.
10:33
Matt Alder
It’s like something there.
10:34
Matt Alder
There are things that you always put.
10:35
Matt Alder
In job ads and we’ve always had it there, so we’re not even going to think about it. And I think one of the issues with the hiring process is there are too many things that have always been done that people don’t ask questions about. And in this case, as you illustrate there, if you actually thought about is that relevant or what does it mean you’d get a much better advert, much better applicants who are much better fit for the role and not exclude people unnecessarily.
11:01
Theo Smith
It’s exclusively by design. Right, and let me give you another quick one, because this for anybody who’s.
11:07
Matt Alder
Like,
11:09
Theo Smith
Maybe that doesn’t work for them. I’ve been analyzing job adverts as well for all other things and what I’ve seen recently at the end of last year is a massive increase in. You need six months probation, right? And six months probation at the top of an advert. And I’m like, so I did some big work with a healthcare company where I advised them on content because what they were doing is they were putting things at the top that they did. Maybe I didn’t even thought about it, right? Or maybe they thought they were good. But the semantics around them, the basically the, what they were saying was having a disproportionate negative impact on them because it wasn’t what people wanted.
11:52
Theo Smith
So people may be suffering with mental health, right, but what they don’t necessarily want at the top of the job advert is we’re going to give you support with your mental health because you’re going to need it, right? It is what I’m saying, like, that’s a red flag to somebody who’s had Chinese.
12:06
Matt Alder
Yeah, absolutely.
12:06
Matt Alder
Yeah, yeah.
12:07
Theo Smith
The main thing we’re going to give you is help with that because you’re going to really struggle, you’re going to have problems. So you’re like, I’m not applying to that job. So this six months probation is exactly that. And I know why it’s there. Often it’s because the company’s been burnt before, because they’re scared, because they’re worried about legal cases going up. So they think in their head, well, let’s get six months probation up there on the top. So it’s explicit to the candidate around the realities of we’ve been burnt and this is what we have to put at the top of the job advert. However, who are you going to get if you put that at the top of the job advert?
12:40
Theo Smith
The other element to that, very briefly is the thing that scared me most is it was most prominent in the public sector, right? And a lot of the inclusion work done in there is great and the tracking the data and stuff can be great, right? But. So that was one worry in an area where public sector educational stuff is on the increase in terms of employment because of the challenges and because of the challenges in the corporate world. So that concerns me, but also my experience, Matt, is when you have six month probation period is often it’s so long that person gets hired. Irrelevant. Irrelevant of whether they perform or not. They still get hired because it’s, it ends up just disappearing. They’re there for 12 months and there were problems, but nobody dealt with them.
13:29
Theo Smith
And it’s so long the manager doesn’t know what to do. So it’s an absolute irrelevant thing to do. So again, that is a design problem, not a people problem. And so if we start to see the design problems and we see them as design problems, then we can think around what is the people’s solution to that problem.
13:51
Matt Alder
Awesome. I’m gonna, let’s, let’s use one more example because I just really like this one, which is interviews. Now I kind of had a realization, so I have ADHD as well. And I had a realization. I had a realization a couple of years ago when I was in the.
14:05
Matt Alder
Middle of a conversation like this in.
14:07
Matt Alder
A podcast that actually in, you know, in my career, I’ve never been successful at getting a job that’s had a standard, what we call a standard interview process. And a lot of that is because sometimes the things that people value interviews like handshakes and eye contact and things like that I’m not very good at when I meet someone for the first time. And you know, it’s, there’s probably many other reasons why I didn’t get those jobs, but, but there’s a pattern there that, you know, and I did get other jobs where the interview process was slightly different or nontraditional or whatever.
14:44
Matt Alder
Talk to us about that.
14:45
Matt Alder
You know, what’s going on in the kind of interview process that is excluding people that people just might not even be thinking about.
14:53
Theo Smith
Yeah. So I’ve had exactly the same experience, Matt. And this is so this, I challenge this in the book. And this is where better designed and structured interview processes that are more evidence based are preferred. Right. And there’s good reasons why they are because the evidence shows that proportionally they perform better through than interview processes that don’t have panels that are all over the place, that don’t really focus on scoring, metric, all of those things. Right. Skills based analysis, all of that. When you, when you take them away, you really are flipping a coin. But the data shows us do you’re still flipping a coin with all those things. It’s still like a 50 shot, right?
15:36
Matt Alder
Yeah.
15:36
Theo Smith
So, so where does that leave someone like you and I two of us, Matt. Right. So it still leaves us in a problematic place because we still may not perform no matter how well designed that process is. In actual fact, we may struggle even more because we. The greater design of that process, the more rigorous is, the more people that are in it, the more focused they are on scoring metrics and stuff like that. The harder it is for you or me in that moment to go into that memory bank and get the exact bit of data required for them to tick that box. So me and you maybe Matt, are going off on some tangent that like in an unstructured interview might be really fascinating for the person who sat over there going, I’ve never thought about it this way. Unstructured interview.
16:23
Theo Smith
They’re going, you’ve not quite answered the question. Right, I tell you what, we’ll just leave that one because we’re. We’ve got an hour and we need to go on to. The more we’ll see if we can get that out of you later. They never do so just like you, Matt, I never. I’m very really successful in those interviews and jobs. I normally get through the back door, I normally get through consultancy and then they go, yeah, you’re really good, can we hire you? Or I get through a fixed term contracts because people in permanent jobs don’t want them because they don’t want to risk losing their. Especially now people don’t want to risk losing their jobs. It’s a great way to sneak in the back door.
16:57
Theo Smith
And often they don’t follow the formal process because they can get rid of you because fixed term contract they’re less worried about it. And I heard who was it we were talking about offline Matt, who talked about, you know, being one of three. You know, they’re hiding three people and you have a better chance if they’re hiding three because you can be the oddball.
17:18
Matt Alder
It was Rory Sutherland is his example.
17:21
Theo Smith
Exactly how he got a job. Yeah, so we both saw Rory Sutherland give that example. He does it in his talks, but it’s a one he himself saying, I wouldn’t have got that big job that I got that Everybody recognizes me for that. I went on to be very successful, you know, world renowned almost. And I wouldn’t have got that job if they hadn’t have hired two other people at the same time into a similar job. And I think that’s like. If we think about that and we think about that in terms of the design of our processes, we can inadvertently think we’ve created the fairest based on the evidence that we have, but it is still not fair. And who are we locking out of that fair process?
18:05
Theo Smith
And often it’s those who would have been kept out of the other processes but may have got in through the worst of processes.
18:15
Matt Alder
Yeah, it’s funny, I’m. Yeah, I, I just, I’ve just been thinking actually I, I did actually get one of the jobs that I had through a, a kind of a sort of a more formal process. It was when I worked for the Guardian newspaper for a long time and their interview process was. I don’t think they ever did it again, but they, it was.
18:34
Matt Alder
Like the Hunger Games.
18:36
Matt Alder
So just you all turned up in the morning and there was about, you were there all day. There was about five stages and they went from about 60 people to five people and people left at every stage. They didn’t come back into the room. And my brain just locked onto it as a fun competition that.
18:52
Matt Alder
I was going to win.
18:54
Matt Alder
So, so because of that I kind of, I sailed through it, but it was just because it, you know, my brain responded to it in a very weird way. But they didn’t repeat that. But it interesting because we’ve talked a lot about the problem, but I, I’m interested in the solution. So obviously without giving too much away about the book because you want people to buy it.
19:14
Matt Alder
What, what is the solution?
19:16
Matt Alder
How, you know, what can people do practically to make sure we do have better systems? Because in a world where things are being accelerated by AI, accelerating broken systems is not a good thing for everyone. So what’s the answer?
19:31
Theo Smith
So what I tried to tell, or share, sorry, what I shared in the book, I tell you, no, what I tried to share is the ability to put on lens on something that you may no longer see or that you never did see. Right. It’s that gap, it’s the blind side and the ability to be able to see those things that we missed. So you may be an incredible manager, you may do things really well, but through the rate of change we have the potential of missing things that can have such a detrimental negative impact on people that potentially we care for that it can end in whatever lawsuits or somebody leaving the team or us losing our self respect and our ability to deliver in the things that we do.
20:23
Theo Smith
So it’s about trying to take a step back and look at some of those systems and processes that we’re responsible for that we’re at the moment switching on through automation. And that may be onboarding as a key example, because as I’ve shared in my last book and in this book, onboarding is a critical point of failure. And what we’re doing is we’re not thinking about the different speeds of learning, we’re not thinking about where somebody may be. So an example I give in a book is because somebody performs well, because they come in and they seem to do well, we just assumed that’s okay and they’re going to continue to perform well. What a lot of top performers do is take mask the gaps and they become very good at it.
21:13
Theo Smith
And we know that neurodivergent talent do it, especially ones that have been successful, because they’ve learned that sharing those gaps often don’t help them. So for example, say if somebody comes in, they struggle with a bit of technology. They rather than go, I’m really struggling with our technology, when they know there’s a three week period to learn that technology, at the end of it, they just go, I’ve got it. They’ve not got it, Matt, I’ve never got it. So what they tend to do is they tend to build their own systems and at nighttime after work, they’re going home building other systems. In Executive Search, it used to be I’d have all these different sheets and bits of information, even though we had a piece of technology where you’re supposed to put all of that.
21:53
Theo Smith
But I found it easier to build my own systems that were ingrained in my mind, that I understood, than to use the system that was specifically paid for. And provided we know this happens a lot in recruitment, lots of people being on there. Yeah, I hate the system.
22:07
Matt Alder
Yeah.
22:07
Matt Alder
Yes, exactly. It’s a very familiar story.
22:10
Matt Alder
For lots of reasons.
22:11
Theo Smith
Absolutely. This is happening across organizations all the time. And now it’s happening with people using AI to plug those gaps. Not only are people building their own systems, but they’re handing some of that responsibility over, which means they may not be taking in some of the information they would have done by building their own systems. So at least you’d have the benefit of knowing your own system. Right where you may not now because you’re handing that work over to another piece of technology.
22:41
Theo Smith
So I’d say managers, recruiters, HR need to think now, where is the risk in those systems and processes where people are struggling, where high performance, what anyone else may have put extra effort in and that we didn’t know about and we’ve allowed that to happen and the way that you’re going to rectify that is to better understand where you’ve been offloading onto people for far too long and that either those people are going to burn out or they’re going to find other ways to plug those gaps. And those ways at the minute are very risky because I’ve done a lot of work with AI I’ve built. I vibe coded. I’ve built all types of stuff.
23:25
Theo Smith
The amount of things I’ve built that have taken me weeks and weeks of hard work, and then I’ve recognized the foundations of these things that I’ve built don’t exist. This stuff is hovering on thin air. And I think we as humans, that is what we’ve done. We’ve offloaded. Let’s pretend AI doesn’t exist. We’ve done this for a hundred years. We’ve offloaded a lot of this because we didn’t see it. We don’t know the actual work people do, so we pretend it doesn’t happen. We don’t know the stress and the anxiety people are feeling at home. So we pretend it’s not happening because it’s easier for us to do that, to keep the wheels running.
24:04
Theo Smith
I feel we’re at a critical moment where we need to look at all those different stages of the process that affect our people and think about where we’re unduly putting pressure on them and pretending like that pressure doesn’t exist.
24:19
Matt Alder
Absolutely. I think that makes a lot of sense, particularly the time that we’re in right now. Theo, thank you very much for talking to me.
24:26
Theo Smith
Thanks, Matt. Really appreciate it.
24:29
Matt Alder
My thanks to Theo. You can follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts on Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcasts. You can search all the past episodes at recruitingfuture.com on that site. You can also subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Recruiting Future Feast, and get the inside track on everything that’s coming up on the show. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next time and I hope you’ll join me.
